"Turn off the music. Turn up the microphone." Oakland three-piece
Burmese took the stage to the sound of one of Andrew W.K.'s happy party
anthems, "Fun Night." This was apparently not the band's choice,
since AWK's I Get Wet album had been playing for the last half
hour, and the band had to glare and then ultimately yell at the sound
man in order to get it turned off. Still, as far as contrasts go, this
was great entrance music. The transition out of AWK's zealous good-time
rock ("We're gonna have a fun night, fun night, fun night, fun
night / Gonna get off, gonna get off, gonna get off, gonna get off!")
only highlighted the menace of Burmese's start, an abrupt "1-2-3-4"
followed by a high-speed bass-sludge train wreck and then an extended
one-chord dirge with screamed-out lyrics like "Kill! Torture! Humiliate!"

Burmese shows are all about bad vibes. Without fail, the band manage
to project an air of ill will and claustrophobic tension that fills
the room. This is especially true of their shows over the past year.
While they do play actual songs with lyrics and some decipherable structure
 at least, most of the time  Burmese's music is ultimately
not about notes, chords, beats, or anything like that. If you wrote
it down on paper and gave it to someone else to play, it probably wouldn't
be very interesting. But in their hands, it takes on a physical presence
that outweighs the sum of the parts. (True, a lot of that presence comes
from the use of two extremely loud, distorted electric basses, which
they beat the hell out of while they play, but it goes beyond that.)

Burmese shows used to be more physically confrontational, with the
two bassists (both named Mike) spending half of their sets out in the
crowd, taunting audience members and testing their sense of personal
space. At a show last summer they set up huge floodlights that they
flashed on and off during the show; the sight of a bunch of supposedly
hardened underground music enthusiasts attempting to cover their eyes
and ears at the same time while remaining in a standing position, and
even clapping between songs, was perverse. The last time I saw Burmese,
on a bill with Wolf Eyesin December at the Covered Wagon, one
of them, the little Mike, stuck his freaking left hand right down my
shirt and then grabbed a hold of it from the inside while clutching
the microphone with his other hand.

Maybe they're tired of getting in fights, or maybe it just got old,
but Burmese have eased up on the physical crowd-taunting aspect of their
performance. Still, the confrontational vibe is there, and at least
while they're up onstage, it feels real and threatening  I don't
know much about their personal lives, but someone I know described them
as "teddy bears." They don't need the old pseudo-tough guy
performance-art antics anymore; these days the evil just seems to ooze
out of their pores.

Monday night's show was a typically concise set of what can only be
described as "Burmese music"  overdriven blasts of misanthropic
hardcore grind mixed in with minimal (but still very loud) dirge sections.
Near the set's end, drummer Mark Schaffergot up from behind
his kit and took over on electronics, while the two Mikes put down their
basses and took turns spouting out cryptic political rants over the
noise and feedback. By the end, little Mike was teetering on the edge
of the stage with his clenched left fist in the air, saying something
like "We've got the power ... and we're gonna use it," while
the other Mike just stood there leering out into the crowd with this
impossibly sick, disturbed look on his face. (Do they practice these
moves in the mirror or what?)

A couple of people in the crowd actually broke out laughing, while
some eyed the band in fear and others just stood there expressionless.
Judging from the comments I overheard on the way out, though, most seemed
to enjoy the experience. What this says about masochistic tendencies
or the need some of us feel to be subjected to temporary assault (and
subsequent letdown), I'll let someone else figure out. (Will York)